Humans of Tyson 2024

 
 
 
 
 

Doug Ladd

Senior Lecturer, Environmental Studies
Co-Principal Investigator, Team Flora

 

“I've been peripherally involved with Tyson for a long time. I had been agitating for years for a list of the plants comprising Tyson’s biodiversity. I finally made contact with Erin [O’Connell], and she, Kim [Medley], and Beth [Biro] figured out how to put it together so we could do it through this summer undergraduate research project. That is how Team Flora came about. I'm basically the plant nerd consultant for the project.” 

After being a botanist for so many years, what is it like working with people that are just at the beginning of their careers and learning to identify plants? 

I’m basically the plant nerd consultant for the project.

“It is refreshing and keeps you honest. My bread and butter was working with vegetation ecology where you have to know your plants. Having to see things through new eyes and articulate differences in plants really forces you back to the basics of what good science should be in terms of taxonomic characteristics and stuff. So I think it is refreshing and it helps you stay at the top of your game.”

What is the greater purpose of why you're collecting these vouchers for Tyson? (A herbarium specimen ‘voucher’ is usually a pressed, mounted plant sample with collection data deposited for future reference.)

“The main reason to have a voucher is because for the last 50 years there have been various lists of plants made from Tyson. But a list provides no scientifically verifiable way to know what plant was truly there. This is a baseline which will provide a permanent record, to go back to the basic biodiversity that comprises one of the main biological influences in the Tyson landscape. 

That information will be useful to future researchers of all kinds. At Tyson, when they started working on the forest plots here, they had to assume any woody plant in Missouri might be there. But now we know the woody plants at Tyson, so they can refine that assumption, which will make field work much easier. Beyond Tyson, by making a permanent voucher specimen that's deposited in the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden, it is available worldwide through their tropical database. It is high resolution-scanned. Researchers around the world will have access to that material.”